Greater Manchester police website DDoSed

Greater Manchester Police have confirmed that the force's website was unavailable on Wednesday evening. The system was quickly brought back online after the initial checks did not reveal anything troublesome.

The website became unavailable again a short time later. A GMP spokeswoman said a person on Twitter from Lithuania has claimed responsibility for causing the website crash. The hacker claims his attack was carried out to “show the failure of security in these large systems.”

The tweet using the handle @n0w1337, responded to the force, saying: "I think these problems responsible was me :)." He then said: "@gmpolice Again I will leave this site offline.

Deputy chief constable, Ian Hopkins, said they treated it as a denial of service (DDoS) attack and apologised for any inconvenience. Hopkins advised that the force's web server was not connected to other police computer systems. It included information that was already available to the public.

A teen from Brazil claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack on Essex Police's website from the same Twitter account that claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack on the GMP website.